


I Might Not Win But You're the One I Lose

by Soulsteel



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst, Character death - Past, Closer to a Love Ladder Than a Love Triangle, Coding Overrides, M/M, Mention - Physical Abuse, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Seeker Trines, Seekers being Seekers, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22290172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulsteel/pseuds/Soulsteel
Summary: In which communication is poor, infidelity is high, and Seekers are Seekers, no matter what form they're currently in.
Relationships: Breakdown/Knock Out, Knock Out/Starscream, Megatron/Starscream, Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker
Comments: 11
Kudos: 89





	I Might Not Win But You're the One I Lose

“Don’t touch me, my wax is setting and you’re filthy.”

Knock Out hadn’t so much as looked at him when he entered their shared quarters. He’d just assumed and kept polishing his claws, faceplates intent. 

Breakdown looked down at his servos. Mining grit and energon dust. Knock Out wasn’t wrong.

He wanted to touch him anyway.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, trying and failing to keep a droop out of his shoulders as he clenched his massive servos. “Can we...y’know? After I wash off?”

Knock Out smirked lazily, optics still focused on the thin topcoat of protective lacquer he was applying to his claws. “Of course, big boy. After my wax sets.”

He was being extra careful with his paint tonight. Breakdown just wished he knew for who. He knew it wasn’t for him; he’d loved Knock Out in every state from pristine to nearly-slagged.

He ought to be upset, he supposed.

But he’d never been the most assertive of mechs. Giving orders to the Vehicons was easy enough; they were essentially friends and all he had to do was point them in a direction. But Knock Out...he’d never been under the illusion that he had control over Knock Out. Not when he met him, not when they interfaced for the first time, not when they’d conjunxed, and definitely not now. When they’d started, he’d had delusions that they’d be like the old stories - fated lovers melding nearly into one being. He supposed it was his bug-riddled combiner coding talking. He knew it was stupid. Knew he was selling himself for nothing to a bot who was so wrapped in himself that the rest of the galaxy barely registered.

He’d walked away from everything for Knock Out anyway.

Knock Out flexed his claws, admiring their gleam in the overhead light. Breakdown grabbed their cleaning supplies - all Knock Out’s favorite scents, not his own. It was probably pointless - Knock Out would be distant and unfocused during their lovemaking. He’d leave after, go to whoever he was prettying himself up for with Breakdown’s transfluid still in his valve. He’d frag them, be gone most of the night shift.

But all that mattered was that Knock Out always came back to him in the end.

***

“You’re late.”

Knock Out summoned up his most charming smile. “Sorry. Work, you know. Vehicons can’t refuel without hurting themselves.”

The Seeker’s elegant wings bobbed in ambivalence. Knock Out couldn’t tell if he’d bought it or not. But he supposed it didn’t matter as Starscream’s long, lustrous legs spread.

“You’d better make up for it. I had to _wait_.” 

“You know I will.” He knelt and pressed cool, well-conditioned lipplates to Starscream’s gratifyingly hot codpiece. The Seeker exvented softly, fans kicking up, and opened for him easily.

Too easily.

Knock Out always had to work to get his attention. For Starscream to unfold under his glossa like this meant he was thinking of someone else.

Phantom pain lanced through his tire mounts, and his Seeker coding whined frantically and scrabbled in the back of his processor. And wasn’t Seeker coding just the problem? He was a grounder now, by his own choice no less. He’d run from his make and model, his class and destiny with his engine redlined. He’d promised himself he’d never look back, that he’d write his own story where he came in second to no one.

And here he was, on his knees, desperately sucking spike in hopes that Starscream would give him a few crumbs of appreciation.

Grounders had conjunxes. One mech to satisfy all their needs. He’d thought it’d be enough, that Breakdown would be enough. That he’d be fine.

He wasn’t. His spark spun and throbbed, yearning for more, for a second bond to keep it stable.

He wanted a trine.

Breakdown wouldn’t - couldn’t - understand. Even with his experience with a gestalt bond, he didn’t know what courting for trining was like. He didn’t know the dance of dominance and submission, the endless stunting for attention, trading everything from glances to transfluid to both prove oneself worthy and at the same time make sure the other was worthy of you.

And Knock Out couldn’t seem to do it. Couldn’t seem to get Starscream’s undivided attention, no matter how he showed off how smart, fast, beautiful, talented he was. He flicked his optics up towards the Seeker’s face.

Starscream’s optics were shuttered. He wasn’t even looking at him. He’d preened and polished for tonight, brought himself to a mirror shine, for nothing. The Seeker wasn’t here, not really. He’d lost again.

Phantom wings screamed in pain as Starscream overloaded down his throat.

***

Starscream’s spark itched.

Megatron lounged in his throne across the bridge, his presence scraping across Starscream’s overclocked processor the same way his EM field abraded his sensors. It felt like a dull file rasping slowly across the edge of his wings - annoying, with an edge of pain.

Sometimes he wished that he’d just gone properly mad when Skywarp and Thundercracker offlined. 

His spark bloomed into a full-blown ache, the broken ends of his trine-bonds crepitating and grinding against every sparkbeat. He flicked his wings, trying to shake their ghosts like a layer of ice on his flaps. They clung instead, insubstantial touches flickering across his ailerons. 

Starscream twitched his wings more violently and strutted across the back of the bridge, field pulled tight, faceplates set in calculated neutrality. He sensed more than saw Megatron’s optics on him, hot and lethal. He shouldn’t care; he hadn’t done anything to earn a beating lately.

Starscream’s traitorous wings hiked high anyway under that unwavering regard, fanning, shivering, showing off smooth polish and agile reflexes. Slag Megatron straight to the Pit, and double-slag his coding for peacocking for the awful brute.

It was incredibly stupid.

Starscream had noticed Knock Out’s displays - Unmaker only knew they were hard to miss. The medic was beautiful in a broken sort of way, the lines of a once-gorgeous Seeker marred by grounder plating and an automobile alt. Raw talent with science and medicine, a streak of pure ruthlessness, an elegant sort of deviousness - all pros. The mech was also excellent in berth, even if Starscream sometimes had to deal with evidence that that Knock Out’s blue bruiser had his own claim. And, thank the Unmaker, the ex-Seeker knew how to court - mutual preening and little gifts, displays of intellectual and battle prowess, pushing and being pushed in return. Certainly Knock Out was vain beyond compare and occasionally vapid, but honestly he could do worse.

He could also do better. 

The Champion of Kaon, the Slagmaker, the leader of the Decepticons. Starscream had been captivated by him since the mech had been a mere gladiator with a miner’s alt mode and a great many opinions. He and Skywarp used to talk about what interfacing with him would be like while Thundercracker looked indulgently on and stroked their fluttering wings, the gleaming spires of Vos visible outside of their habsuite.

Now Megatron was a Dark Energon-addled fool, ruining stellar cycles’ worth of careful tactics in a handful of Earth months. He was short-sighted, rageful, destructive, and above all obsessed with Optimus Prime.

Starscream wanted him to pin him down and take him against the primary comm console so that the whole ship and possibly even the Autobots would hear how good he was getting it.

His coding devoured evidence of Megatron’s raw power, his casual strength, his combat prowess. It latched onto memories of Megatron as a competent warlord, as a fiery orator, as a passionate revolutionary. It digested all that, and what exploded out was raw, ravenous hunger for a new trinemate, someone to keep him from endlessly retracing the holes Thundercracker and Skywarp had left like a glossa prodding at a broken denta plate, hoping for the tang of energon.

And so he’d begun courting him. Naturally, Megatron even didn’t know that a dance was occurring, let alone the steps.

He’d wheedled, coaxed, argued, complained, fought, and even attempted assassination - all in the name of asserting a trace of dominance over the physically paramount Megatron. Vos may be a bombed out ruin, its Metrotitan likely dead, but he was still a Prince of it, frag it. Aside from his rank, he knew all too well that he was one of the fastest and most beautiful Seekers still online. He was worth some effort, some strain, some struggle. Someone should have to soar at the same dizzying heights he did to get him to bond with them.

Had Megatron been a Seeker warrior, he’d have responded by challenging Starscream on his own strengths: science, tactics, or flight agility. The challenge would have been epic, the pursuit mighty, the conclusion climactic in more ways than one. Then there’d be the final courting flight, Starscream blazing through the sky with his turbines roaring, twisting and turning and spiralling frantically to try to lose Megatron, to make him work for it, to show he’d earned it. And when he caught him - when he forced an admission of surrender from him as they spun towards the ground - Starscream would have his reward. Such spirit could only be rewarded one way, and Starscream’s wings trembled to think of it.

But.

Megatron wasn’t a Seeker, and despite his flight mode he would not follow their customs. The ancient laws Megatron obeyed were the ones built in Kaon’s gladiatorial pits, where a courting Seeker’s behavior would have jeopardized his very survival. Starscream’s left wing mount ached dully as his wings drooped, reminding him of the last time he’d had Megatron’s full attention.

His spark ached more.

**Author's Note:**

> As with many of my fics, this was seeded by a song. In this particular case, "Vain" by Singularity feat. Evan Duffy. One of the better Knock Out songs in existence, in my opinion. Also, apologies for the rust, it's been about a decade since I last wrote creatively.


End file.
